Not that I expect to change anyone's world views with a comment, but for the sake of those who are simply curious: The North Korean regime is the brainchild of Stalin, whose one consistent foreign policy was to set up satellite regimes in all states bordering the Soviet Union. After the liberation of Korea, the Soviets who occupied the northern half of the country drove out the people's committees that had been set up by Koreans in Pyongyang and other cities, refused to let the Koreans under their rule participate in the U.N.-mandated elections, and set about installing a puppet regime headed by Kim Il Sung, a major in the Soviet Red Army who didn't even speak fluent Korean at the time. It was North Korea's invasion of the South that sparked the Korean War, and without the involvement of U.N. forces led by the Americans, all of the Korean peninsula would have come under Kim's rule. Now, there is an argument to be made that facing the military might and carpet bombing by the U.S. became a defining experience and national mythology for North Korea, leading to their extreme bunker mentality, but if North Korea can be blamed on an empire, it is only the Soviet one.